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Is It Time For Ohio State To Make Kyle McCord Its Full-Time Starter? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Sunday, September tenth. I'm your host,
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  tom Or. The Western Kentucky game is in six days. The game against
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  Michigan in seventy six days, Game two of the regular season. In the
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  books, Kevin Nowton joins me from Ohio Stadium. We're going to be recapping
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  the buckeyes thirty five seven win over Youngstown State. But Kevin, I think
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  even more than the game itself, the final score, the storyline coming out
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  of that is Okay, So what's going on with the quarterbacks? Has Ohio
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  State found a clear enough separation that you're at the point where, okay,
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  it's time to make a decision on the quarterback? Yeah, And we had
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  the chance in the postgame interviews. I mean, of course that was a
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  question. Everybody wanted to kind of find out what was going on, and
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  Ryan Day wasn't ready to show his hand. But I guess you don't have
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  to be a body language expert or one of these, you know, psychology
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  type guys to go through it. I think that we're getting there at this
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  point. I mean, certainly with the way that the snaps kind of broke
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  down, certainly with what we saw in the field, we certainly have not
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  gotten to the point of where we've said, Okay, well this guy is
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  just significantly beyond because you know, we're looking at a thirty five point output
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  against Young Sound State. I think a lot of people, I mean,
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  especially Vegas with a forty four point line. I mean, Ohio State certainly
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  didn't cover at that point. But we are getting to that point, and
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  I think that it's getting to that that window of where you have to I
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  mean, I think you need to be able to go into Western Kentucky with
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  a clear idea because you've got Notre Dame lurking the week after. Yeah,
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  if Ohio State had Michigan schedule where you have one more nonpower team and then
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  you've got Rutgers the week after that, maybe you've got a little more time
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  to sort of hem and hall about this and play out the string a little
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  bit more. You got Notre Dame in two weeks. The Notre Dame game.
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  It's not in the countdown yet, but it's in thirteen days. You
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  gotta you gotta start not only the game reps and getting the offense sort of
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  in its rhythm and in the flow and having a consistent guy there. It's
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  really to mean more about the practice reps and getting Kyle mccor because they've been
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  splitting them and I don't know if it's exactly fifty fifty, if they've been
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  splitting them all through fall camp and even the last two weeks Devin Brown getting
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  a bunch of reps with the ones. I think you're at the point now
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  where if you're comfortable with Kyle mccor at having separated from Devin Brown, and
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  I think you'll look at the game film from the first two weeks and you're
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  you know, he came into the season ahead. I don't think it's gotten
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  closer, so it may have gotten a little bit, you know, a
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  little bit more of a bigger gap. You're probably at the point where you
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  need to say, Okay, we're going to make a decision. This is
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  a decision, and you've got to you know, you've got to give all
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  those reps of the ones the next week and then you know, next two
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  weeks going into Notre Dame. But you know, you gotta take it one
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  game at the time. Kevin the next week going into that Western Kentucky game,
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  you almost have to kind to make a decision and just say, okay,
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  look, you're still going to play at some point, like we're not
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  saying goodbye and you're one snap away if Kyle mccorn gets hurt or whatever.
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  But you kind of got to make a decision. Well, that's a thing.
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  In through fall camp they were able to run two fields, and you
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  can't really do that in game week because all right, that's all well and
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  good. You're you're out there and you're running with half your line or whatever,
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  or is whoever your second quarterback really getting a good look because they're going
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  against the second line anyway, So you need to make sure that you do
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  have your guy picks so you can have all those reps. I mean,
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  and as we know that the way that practice schedule goes, Tuesday, bloody
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  Tuesday is going to be the most physical practice. Wednesday is still pretty pretty
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  stout. You know, on Thursday you start backing them down and then you
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  you know, you have best Fridays in football. If if Ryan carried that
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  over from Urban, I don't know, But so, yeah, you've got
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  to make this decision. And I think that we're at that point where the
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  decision has been made whether or not Ryan Day is ready to say it or
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  not. Yeah, and he didn't make that. He didn't announce it after
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  the game on Saturday. But you know, to me, this feels very
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  much like an Okay, go back into the office on Sunday morning, watch
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  the film, make sure you really saw what you thought you saw, and
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  you know, we'll rewatch the game as well, Tony and I'll do a
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  Buckeye weekly on things we learned rewatching the game, and sometimes you'll come away
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  with a different impression. But you know, I'm walking out of the stadium
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  on Saturday night thinking it's probably going to be klm accord. It probably should
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  be Kyle McCord. So just to kind of give you the numbers, there,
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  fourteen to twenty, two hundred and fifty eight yards, three touchdowns,
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  seventy percent completions for Kyl McCord, Devin Brown seven for thirteen, one hundred
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  and one yards, no touchdowns, no picks, fifty four percent completion and
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  then kym accord had one rush for one yard on a third and ten.
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  That was probably not a great decision to try and run, you know,
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  and you finished nine yards behind the line, is you know, behind the
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  yard to gain Devin Brown on fourth and five he got tackled maybe for a
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  loss or a very short gain, where another one where you got to,
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  you know, probably not a great decision. You're probably trying to do too
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  much. He finished with six carries for nine yards. So, you know,
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  the running that we kept hearing about with Devin Brown, and you've seen
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  a little bit on you know, high school highlights and stuff that hasn't really
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  materialized yet at the college level. So I think that's another thing where if
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  Devin Brown was running so much better and was showing incredible escapability, maybe that's
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  a point of differentiation with some questions and the offensive line, but you just
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  you haven't really seen it, so you're probably sort of all the data feels
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  like it's sort of pointing in the same direction. Let's talk about that offensive
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  line though, because it was not great week one, it feels like it
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  wasn't great week two. There were a couple of penalties. The rushing was
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  you know, Travian Henderson hit a big one, hit a third yarder.
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  He ended up at eleven point two yards per carry just five carries or fifty
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  six yards. Mine Williams four point two yards per carry, jip train him
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  three point three yards per carry Xavier Johnson four yards of carry. You gotta
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  be able to do better than that against an FCS team, right, So,
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  as you said it wasn't great week one, was it was it less
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  great week two? I mean, I don't think we saw as many procedural
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  errors as we saw prior, but execution still is not there, and it's
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  not I mean, everybody has decided, well, this player or that player
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  isn't getting it done. I don't think anybody really had a great game,
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  if we're being honest, and I'll be curious to see what happens when they
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  start to great champions. Can they have a point of coming out of a
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  win where you have zero champions on your starting offensive line. I think it's
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  I think it's quite possible, and it certainly was even to the point of
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  your veterans. And Matt Jones and Donovan Jackson both had their issues as well,
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  So I don't know what the fix is going to be there. I
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  use this phrase way too much, but you can't really get out there and
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  do engine repairs at thirty five thousand feet on your plane. You're gotta you
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  gotta kind of ride with what you got, but they're gonna need to sort
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  some things out and I think that they're going to have to execute better,
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  is what it just comes down to. It's easy for us to say that
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  we're not the ones out there sweating in the trenches, but it's I mean
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  something, something has got to change. Well, after week one, they
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  talked about the fact that, you know, it wasn't these guys can't do
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  it, it's you know, hey, this guy's you're blocking the wrong guy,
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  You're you're you know, you're making the wrong decision at this point something
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  like that. That's stuff that you can fix, but you gotta fix it.
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  You gotta you know, a problem that is solvable, that's great,
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  but you actually got to solve the problem. That's and that's where we had
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  a lot of folks on our postgame show in the comments asking, you know,
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  can they can they have someone else go play one of these positions and
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  you shuffle these guys around, and you really don't want to be doing in
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  that in the in the season. They didn't want to be doing that in
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  fall camp. They shuffled guys the first week of fall camp and then they
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  kind of said, Okay, this is what it's going to be. And
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  at the time, we looked at that and said, well, Okay,
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  they obviously are feeling good about this because they haven't shuffled it again. Maybe
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  I mean, maybe they were just feeling less bad. Yeah, I mean,
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  maybe this is the best of the situation that you're in. They've you
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  know, and I'm sure that there are folks who are going to blame Justin
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  Fry for this sort of reflectively the offensive line coach, I gotta remember this
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  is only his second year an offensive line as a position where it is maybe
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  the single most developmental position in the college game. You know, you can
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  you can have a guy come in and play wide receiver his first season.
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  Cardinal Tate has been out there a whole bunch of snaps already in games one
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  and two of his true freshman season. You've seen running backs. You've seen
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  JK. Dobbins come in and do that. You saw Mike Webber come in
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  and do that for you know, freshman season offensive line that takes a couple
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  of years for guys to get up the strength, guys to get up the
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  technique, all that kind of stuff. And you had some misses in the
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  end of the Greg stdwar era where boy, you know, yeah they hit
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  on Paris Johnson, Yeah they hit and Luke Whibbler, those guys are off
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  to the NFL. You've had some other misses in some of these classes where
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  you're not going to hit one hundred percent because it is such a developmental and
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  projectable position. But you know that this is something that is going to take
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  This is not a problem that's necessarily going to be solved overnight. You've got
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  to just you gotta do whatever you gotta do to figure it out at this
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  point, right, And you're right on the misses. And how much would
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  Ohio State loved to have at JC Latham who looked like Ohio State was the
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  team to beat there and covid check to everything down and he just picks Alabama
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  and he's doing very well at Alabama. I mean, Ohio States certainly it
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  benefited in some of its landing of players because of it too. But you
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  know, the offensive line has not been really there. And you sit there
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  and you look at this true freshman class. Does Luke Montgomery really start to
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  enter the discussion more? Do you? I mean people want to talk about
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  kicking Donovan Jackson out to tackle. Then what do you do at the other
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  guard position? He knock vmahi or somebody like that. I mean, there's
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  a lot of different combinations that you can have here, but they certainly had
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  plenty of practices coming up through fall camp and into the two weeks of game
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  prep that they've gone through so far, and the combination we see right now
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  is the one that they felt was going to be the best. I mean,
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  at what point do you sit there, maybe look at something else?
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  But you're right, you don't want you don't want to be making a lot
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  of herky jerky changes because this is a position where you need five guys to
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  move as one unit, and if you keep putting new people in there,
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  you kind of go back to square one in a lot of regards. And
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  if you go back to the end of last season when we knew Ohio State
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  was going to lose Paris Johnson and Dwan Jones, you'll hear us talking about
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  the possibility of, hey, maybe do kick kick Donovan Jackson out to left
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  tackle and fill in that spot at guard. They didn't do it in the
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  spring. They didn't do it in the fall, at least as far as
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  we saw. So you know, I mean, we're not super geniuses who
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  are out thinking the coaching staff on this stuff. Obviously someone you know,
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  someone in that room has obviously had that thought, and there's a reason they
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  didn't do it. It didn't work for whatever reason they probably tried it or
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  no that no, for some reason, it's not going to work. So
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  I don't think that's something if you didn't if you weren't willing to try it
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  in the spring, or it didn't work in the spring, you're not going
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  to try it in the middle of the season. Not just the time from
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  experimentation is March, not not with Notre Dame in thirteen days, just brushing
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  right past that one. Uh yeah, with the Notre Dame game thirteen days
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  away. If you were going to mess around with it, you do that
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  when the Notre Dame game is two hundred days away and it's March and not
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  you know, two weeks away. So that's I think of all of the
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  concerns with this team, you know, I think quarterback, offensive line,
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  and you know, maybe like that safety spot, that adjuster safety spot.
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  Of those three, I want you to rank those three areas of concern for
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  you right now, because I feel like those numbers have maybe shuffled a little
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  bit for folks over time. Which one is the biggest of those three concerns
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  and then second and then the least of the three concerns to you? Offensive
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  line is by far the biggest concern. Agree, I'd probably say quarterback and
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  then the adjuster safety spot. I mean, I think that if you have
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  the other two working, the adjuster safety spot is not as much of an
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  issue. But if you were to flip adjuster safety spot and quarterback, I
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  mean, I think that I think that quarterback is going to work its way
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  out. But I still think that with it being the position that this player
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  has his hand on the ball for every offensive play outside of running the wildcat,
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  which Ohio State doesn't do a ton of, it has to be where
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  it is. And I just think that the safety is going to be fine.
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  We're looking at an Ohio State defense that has given up ten points so
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  far, and granted, Indiana ran triple option, which was not they're not
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  in their DNA and it and it showed and youngst Sound State scored a touchdown,
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  but ten points over eight quarters of football, and things are going to
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  change a little bit. I think that your tolerance for paying may need to
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  be a little bit higher. For Western Kentucky, they're going to throw the
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  ball all over. But yeah, that's the way I see it. Yeah,
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  Western Kentucky scoring twenty points would not shock me at all. Next week
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  and then Notre Dame. Notre Dame went into Raleigh and beat North Carolina State
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  forty five twenty four, you know, and that's again, that was a
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  team where it was twenty four points after three quarters. It was a twenty
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  four seventeen game. Then Notre Dame pulls win in the fourth quarter. NC
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  State didn't look great in Week one against Yukon. I think NCC it's probably
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  not going to be a great team this year, but that's a goodwin.
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  You know. They put up more points against North Carolina State than Ohio State
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  puts up against Youngstown State. That it's certainly certainly somebody to keep an eye
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  on at the very least. So we'll be keeping an eye on all of
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  that stuff. At pukee huddle dot com. We've got full coverage of the
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  game of a photo gallery up there for you had did what two and a
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  half hours or so of live postgame coverage something like that for the Young Sound
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  State game might do a little more when we get even some bigger games coming
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  up. There's gonna be a whole lot to talk about with Ohio State and
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  the Notre Dame game coming up, in the Western Kentucky game before that,
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  and Big Ten race and all that stuff. All we're getting sort of getting
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  into Big ten season relatively soon, so it would be a great time to
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  join us at pucke huddle dot com. We have a fantastic team of insiders
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  covering recruiting. We'll probably be talking about recruiting on one of these upcoming shows.
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  Ohio State had some interesting visitors in town, commits, a couple of
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  guys committed to other schools, so some a couple of potential potential flip candidates
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  to keep an eye on. We'll be talking about that on one of the
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  upcoming show morning shows. Plus lots of you know him, you love Them,
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  Ross Fulton, the XS and OS stuff we're messing around with, you
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  know, additional video of games and all that kind of stuff. I think
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  we maybe have found a solution there, So we'll have a Ross show or
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  two coming up a little later on the week, and then all sorts of
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  all sorts of coverage of the team and Ryan Day interviews and player interviews and
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  all that stuff this week as well, leading up to that Western Kentucky game
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  on Saturday. So that will do it for today. Thank you guys all
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  for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk to Ja tomorrow.